Plasma Tweak

[Askil the Undecided]

I am planning a campaign to start soon and I was looking at the plasma gun rules and felt they really needed a tweak as they are something of a confusion.

This is specifically about the plasma gun as I felt it needed the most tweaking to make it worthwhile, but the special rules and sustained fire applying for low power rahter than max power are the general template I wish to apply.

Low power:

Short Range 0-8
Long Range 8-18
Short +1
Long -
Strength 5
Damage 1
Save mod -1
Ammo 4+

Sustained fire: 1 dice

Maximum power:

Short Range 0-10
Long Range 10-24
Short +1
Long -
Strength 7
Damage 1
Save mod -2
Ammo 4+

Special:
Recharge: If fired at maximum power or sustained fire is used the plasma gun takes a full turn to recharge.

Plasma Venting: Due to the risks of Plasma burns, thermal venting, malfunction and the chance of catastrophic containment failure this weapon uses the rules for exploding weapons even if they are not generally used.

The basic idea is to make the plasma gun play more like a mid-range heavy assault weapon and less like a short ranged pistol with an underslung muti ICBM launcher.

Any thoughts?

[Catferret]

Only suggestion would be maybe to up damage on the max power shot. D3 or summat. Would sort of match the 1-3 shots that sustained fire has.

Gives you rapid firing low strength for chewing through mooks; or a "Holy bejeebus, that's a scaly in my face" charged up kill shot.

[Askil the Undecided]

My revision was three part:

I wanted the plasma gun to outperform the shotgun at low power and the boltgun at high power thus finally justifying it's cost.

I never felt that it made sense to unleash so much more damage and have multiple shots at max power.

I wanted to bring the plasma gun more into line with the modern rapid fire 40k version.

[Catferret]

I think my issue with your tweak is that I'd probably always fire on low power. Wounds most things on 2+ and has potentially more chances to do so.

[Askil the Undecided]

True low power is now far more useful but there are still the limiting factors of a short range compared to cheaper basics and the recharge applying to sustained fire.